Legacies
by Arrancarzors
Summary: Hope springs eternal... as do heroes. [Short one-shots on the next-gen]
1. ClarisseChris

**A/N: Welcome! So first up we have one of the minor couples, Clarisse/Chris. It may seem a strange couple to start out with, but I'm most proud of this one-shot of the three already written. **

**I hope this is a respectful depiction of the 'disorder' in question, and that nobody is offended by the difficulty Clarisse has in dealing with a severe form of it, as well as her own emotional habits.**** I would never pretend to be an expert in the effects of spectrum-disorders, and would appreciate feedback on how well or badly this was handled- especially by readers on the spectrum themselves!**

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Catalina Silena LaRue-Rodriguez was an accident- which isn't to say she wasn't wanted or loved. She was just a surprise, in every meaning of the word.

Chris was a big family-man. It kind of came with Hispanic culture; he had always expected to have kids underfoot and cousins always over, which was a little weird for Clarisse at first. She'd had almost no contact with her mortal family for years, and didn't see any reason to make nice while standing on bridges that themselves stood over so much deep, dark water. It was Catalina who changed her, really.

Clarisse had always assumed she'd make a terrible mother. There was the whole Ares thing to consider, first off, as well as her lack of patience and that violent streak; by birthright, she thrived on conflict and winning dominance, which were the opposites of what she had seen in her own mother (and couldn't forgive her for). On some level, she also understood that raising an Ares kid was hell and didn't feel like going through that. She didn't feel like slowing down and caring for someone else.

Maybe it had been when she'd promised Hedge to keep after Mellie, but something began to change in Clarisse- very gradually, very quietly, but change none the less. Seeing Hedge's dedication to them, and the security that came from having a family who_all _cared about each other, were new scenes for her.  
So was watching Mellie nearly die (or so Clarisse had thought) in childbirth, and the look of pure, divine relief on her face when the whole ordeal had completed. That look didn't come when the pain stopped... no. It only appeared when she finally held that baby boy in her arms- when she met her son face-to-face.  
That agony had meant nothing, Mellie told her, when compared to that moment of meeting.

Watching that little family bloom, Clarisse's world grew- and so did she. She had an interest not only in her promise to Hedge, she soon realized, but in their well-being, and finally in their happiness. She was far, far gone before she even noticed that they'd changed her: suddenly, sitting on the floor with Chuck during an emergency baby-sitting situation one night, she had realized: _Even I can do this. _

Still, when she'd found out she was pregnant, she'd considered getting rid of it. She didn't know if she'd changed enough to be able to do what Mellie did, in sacrificing everything for a little life. What if she didn't connect with this baby, or it didn't like war games and all the good Ares stuff? What if there was something wrong with her and she couldn't love that deeply? What if because it was her kid, it would be damaged too?

But Chris had wanted, and Clarisse wanted him, so she resolved to try.

Catalina had anger issues. That was fine- the legacy of Ares, you know.  
But then she had a thing about eye contact, too. And a thing about sounds. And a thing about being touched...

Clarisse had no idea what autism was. She'd never heard of the word, and had to the last thought that her kid was just unusually full of Ares anger; she recognized the traits in herself, and thought they'd just passed right on. But Catalina was more than angry; she was lost in some scary, swimmy world where the lights were always took bright and hiding under the dinner table was preferable to a hug. She didn't talk, and that was when Clarisse finally realized that something was 'wrong' with her daughter; she didn't argue back with her.

And then she cried; she cried because she was terrified that this was her fault, and that she would never really know this beautiful, hard-eyed little girl who she'd carried inside of her for nine months. She cried because she didn't understand her daughter's rages, or what brought her joy.  
She called her mom for the first time in five years and cried with her, because now she understood what it was like to love someone who was unreachable- the way she had been, in her own anger, as a girl. And now she was a woman and a mother- but never the one she'd expected to be.

But Catalina too changed her: gradually and quietly. One day Clarisse was swinging from depression to elation, just trying to get this girl out from under the dinner table and to stop screaming at night, and the next she was making Catalina shriek with happiness by rolling her balls of tissue paper (her favorite sound on the planet). Suddenly she was standing on the porch, anxiously watching Chris walk her duck-footed little girl to the pre-school bus, and he came back to kiss her and she realized again: _Even I can do this_.

She brought around the chariot of Ares one night, when Catalina was in a dark place.

She'd been a rickety pall of tangled, tear-soaked limbs- but at the sight of her grandfather's skeletal horses, something in Catalina had quieted, fascinated. Those horses which took to no one felt something in her, and flared their fiery nostrils quietly, allowing her to pet them. When they took off into the sky Clarisse had clutched her worriedly, but Catalina hardly noticed: she was fearless, leaning out the front to pat the rumps of the skeleton-horses and standing with her arms out like Rose from _Titanic._

And how she _laughed_: beautiful, silvery laughter pealing first from her and then from Clarisse, as they swooped over Camp again and again. The legacy of Ares didn't always have to be isolation and anger- it _could_ be togetherness, joy...

Clarisse fell in love with her child again, that night. She watched her sleeping peacefully that evening, the hard look on her face gone, and felt like she was meeting her again for that first, beautiful time- all of the pain forgotten.

Catalina Silena LaRue-Rodriguez was a constant surprise... but then, Clarisse could be one too, sometimes.


	2. Percabeth

Annabeth still wakes up in terror, too.

As long as they've been sleeping side-by-side, it still took him time to see the shadow left on her by Tartarus. She's brave and composed, and that's what he loves about her... but he also loves the broken parts of Annabeth, even if he's never been sure how to tell her. So when she startles awake, babbling about the dark and the mist, he cozies up to her back and swallows her in his arms, where he hopes Nyx and the Weaver and the face of the Pit cannot intrude.

When she sleeps again and his own chest grows tight with both scars from the acid air and emotion, he goes down the hall and looks into the two rooms, one after the other:

Robert sleeps on his back, legs and arms splayed out like he's sky-diving. His black hair is thick like Annabeth's but wavy like Percy's, and he has her impish nose. He's smart, but likes to pretend he isn't. When he's asleep and not making Diet Coke and Mentos rockets explode around the house, he looks as angelic as a Greek cherub. But looks can be decieving...

Damara is the real angel, sleeping with her hands folded under her head. Mommy's little genius, she can keep up with her brother in mischief-making- but in her deepest nature she's more like Annabeth. Percy is stunned at how sensitive and aware she can be, at seven. It always seems strange to him that something like that could come from him- but then, miracles happen all the time.

Miracles like living long enough to have kids.

Something calms inside of him, seeing them peaceful and safe. He can usually go back to sleep, then.

In the daytime, though, they still work miracles: they bring home good grades, and they can read without the words jumbling up. Damara can move water sometimes, and Robert won an arts-and-crafts contest at Camp with a three-dimensional god's-eye weaving that he said just "came to him". His kids don't have to fight; that's a miracle enough in itself.

And then there's how they can make him feel...

When Damara climbed the roof of the Big House and wouldn't come down over some schoolkid crush, he was terrified and angry. He wanted to cry at her stubbornness and water-whip her down from there at the same time- but when she climbed down herself, safe again, a feeling like being underwater washed over him. When a crumpled-up school paper with an A+ on it, entitled "My Dad Is My Hero", fell out of Robert's backpack, that old offer of immortality and godhood couldn't compare.

When he comes home late to three smiling faces around the table and blue cake on his birthday; when Damara holds his hand crossing the Principia; and when he and Annabeth watch secretly from the kitchen window as their kids play-act the stories they've heard about the Titan War and the retrieval of the Golden Fleece, stories from _their _lives, it's a feeling beyond gods or the powers of the primordial.

When he sees them warm and safe in their sleep, his own nightmares dissipate.


End file.
